~ serial lives: 22 years of writings & musings

related – chapter one

This book represents an initial foray into what can be referred to as a contemporary philosophical perspective which utilizes a variety of methods including practical, logical, metaphysical, and speculative approaches. The eventual purpose of this book is simply to expand our thinking about ‘Human Potential’. There are, at least, three primary background influences. These premises or assumptions, as a background, include the concepts of the double planet, the generalist, and the initiate.

The concept of the double planet is an assumption of an extra layer of reality that exists behind this planet or this physical reality that we are already familiar with. This premise could apply to humans and their human experience. There is an implication of some form or some manner of interconnectivity within and between these double realities.

The concept of the generalist, by definition, is an individual who knows and/or experiences an adequate amount or a modest amount about a wide variety of issues/themes. This is opposed to someone who is a specialist, and that is someone who knows and/or experiences in a deep or comprehensive manner and this deep or comprehensive manner is usually limited to a few issues and themes. The motivation for the generalist, and the outlook for the generalist, is to keep adding to an ever-expanding big picture or holistic reality.

The concept of the initiate is an individual who possesses the condition of the beginning mind. The initiate, with the beginning mind, is found throughout history and throughout various cultures as a mythological archetype. An individual, with the beginning mind, ideally exists in a continuous condition of inquiry or this person can be considered a lifelong learner. This person tends to continually search for choices and for options as opposed to requiring definitive final answers.

..They obey a third body that they share in common. They have made a promise to love that body. Robert Bly – 1985

▬ ONE ▬

Network

Interrelations, in most cases, are considered a demonstrable fact. On a global level, our ecosystem includes all species and life forms, living and nonliving, into an interactive community. Our climate systems interact with land forms and water masses. Human cultures, as a part of the ecosystem, are also interconnected in the international human community through the media, commerce, agriculture, the arts, politics, and other areas of human endeavors.

A community is a group or grouping with many forms of commonalities. Social, ethnic, religious, and family bonds; and associations, contracts, contacts, and exchanges are some of the modes of relating within a community. In a more complex scenario, associations do cross boundaries and categories between many seemingly diverse groupings.

Human cultures, climate systems, non-human species, ecosystems, and etc., obviously overlap but not as obvious; they also relate directly and interactively. All groups or systems are impacted by the other systems but the quality or manner of this relatedness is distinct and unique.

Human cultures communicating and interacting via media and media mechanisms are understandable to us. However the energetic exchanges between diverse broad systems are invisible and these exchanges are not as understandable. Strong human thought, intentions, and/or emotions can influence these broad systems as these broader systems, reciprocally, influence us.

Macro and micro interactions are multi-directional. Human groups, climate systems, non-human species, and ecosystems can be understood as one larger integrated community and that further suggests a vast, complex web of diverse association with multiple levels and directionality and a variety of implications.

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Our reference to human culture or society refers specifically to a large group or grouping of individuals associated by a complexity of relationships involving social roles and functions within a geographical region or nation or nations or civilization. The human culture or society will have dominant and non-dominant commonalities in language, institutions, hierarchy, cultural expectations, cultural values/mores, cultural identity, and so on. Predominately individuals or subgroups are interdependent upon each other in order to negotiate and access the innumerable aspects of human life that cannot be solely obtained by an individual.

From a metaphysical standpoint, human culture or society could be considered an outward or physical manifestation of an interior and complex collectivism of interests, values, aspirations, fears, and so forth. An interior complex collectivism, or a collective consciousness, could be considered a form of cultural consciousness that would be an aggregation of vast numbers of individuals’ internal interests, values, aspirations, fears and so on.

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Our immediate network of friends, family, social contacts, and business contacts occupy the majority of our daily interactions. These interactions constitute family, friends, and colleagues connections. These connections can ideally make an individual appreciate those mutual exchanges of actions, feelings, thoughts, and etc., and of course these exchanges are valued, essential, and meaningful. Family and friends exchanges can, at the very least, satisfy basic human needs of survival, safety, and kin-ship. Interactions with an extended network of work associations and community associations can ideally satisfy basic human needs and higher interests, as well as; including communal, societal, and spiritual interests/values.

We adapt different roles or personas with different people and within different situations. We are sibling to other siblings, sometimes a parent or sometimes a child, or alternately a supervisor or an employee. We can be a different person depending upon the role that we take on. We can adopt subtle shifts in physical, vocal, emotional, and energetic postures; by example, we might be more gregarious emotionally and more proactively energetic in a work role while emotionally subdued and energetically even-keeled with a friend.

Our different roles, personas, or personalities do not necessarily imply a type of schizophrenia; rather it suggests a multiplicity or a complexity of cultural selfhood.

A person when relating to others, ideally, create opportunities to learn, to understand, to reflect, to contribute, to grow, and to change, and to make decisions and to initiate action in the world. Families and extended social and professional networks operate in a similar fashion and for similar reasons. Families, functional families, do tend to have central values, methodology, and goals while ideally maintaining some sense of individuality among its members. Families and broader networks can grow, change, and evolve. To a further extent, with the large populations of people on our planet, relating within groups of people with some degree of commonalities could be considered a primary or essential activity within human experience.

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A group of travelers are waiting at a train station, in our town or any town in the world. There is a direct and indirect connection between everyone who is patiently or impatiently waiting. There are unnoticed exchanges of energy, emotions, and thoughts, at the very least, among the humans. The physical fixtures, furnishing, and objects, which are attached to the walls and floors of the station, tacitly contribute to and participate in this broad interactive experience. Mostly invisible, is the ebb and flow of innumerable interdependent events.

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We understand that there can be a condition of relating or various types of relating between individuals but rarely extend that consideration to interactions between individuals and objects, between individuals and the natural world, between individuals and places, or between non-human entities and/or objects. Nor do we take the further step of imagining connections between, the individual and intangibles; such as ideas, values, actions, or experiences.

If we were to seek an broader view of ‘human experience’ and ‘non-human experience’ then perhaps a starting point would be to redefine experience or reality in the context of the variety of types of relating or relationships that can exist between this vast range of participants.

As over-simplistic, yet mysterious, as it may sound, a basic attribute of experience or existence is the intricate web of relating that exists between all of us. The ‘us’ in this viewpoint would include a variety of entities, human and non-human; animate and inanimate; the tangible and the intangible. The web of intricacy would be an exchange between two or more beings or entities or objects and the components of exchange could be energy, thoughts, language, signals, feelings, or other and varied types of interactions. These interactions influence, shape, and color actions or events that we experience.

The act of relating, which could be one of many functions between beings and entities, implies a ‘coherent or natural association’ and the act implies that there is an established point of reference or points of reference and it implies that there are associations that are created and maintained within the context of these points of reference.

Between two people having a conversation, a point of reference could be a common language, a similar cultural value, a compatible vocational focus, a similarity in personal interests and/or a multitude of other commonalities. Two scientists working on the same project would have the project as a point of reference or a framework or context in which coherent exchanges can occur. A group of high school students taking the same mathematics class would have the same point of reference or a shared orientation because of the class curriculum. Two strangers, from different countries, traveling on a plane, who share and discuss photos of family members, would have a point of reference or a common ground; and this would be because of the shared photos of family members which would allow some form of exchange to be established.

A ‘coherent or natural association’ that occurs when two or more humans, or any entities, are involved in exchanges, implies firstly that the exchanges have some amount of value and/or that the exchanges are meaningful or relatable; and secondly that the exchanges usually have an ebb and flow that is somewhat organic and direct and continuous.

Between two people having a discussion about sports; associations could include memories about past sporting events; analysis, dialogue, and debate about current sporting events; or speculation about future events. A group in a cooking class could create a ‘coherent or natural association’ when they exchange ideas about cooking and when they introduce creative or new elements, about cooking, into the class discussions and practice.

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Spectators present at a sporting event; a soccer game, a basketball game or baseball game; have a unique perspective. They have an opportunity to view continuous individual and collective actions and reactions during the course of the game. The spectators can see physical and emotional exchanges and they can sense or imagine the additional levels of non-visible psychological and energetic relating between all participants. They can see and they can anticipate and they can reflect on numerous ongoing interrelated and interdependent events as the overall game unfolds.

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The complexity and multiplicity of relating could be understood in the context of a convergence of traffic in any city in the world. A typical traffic intersection could be a four-way intersection with traffic lights, lanes structured for various options; turn left, turn right or go straight; and dozens of cars continually stopping, going, or waiting. The event or events that are created is one of constant motion or non-motion but all the participants; human and non-human, in some manner; are aware and reacting with each other whether directly or indirectly. Unseen and not apparent are non-physical interactions between all participants in the intersection and also not apparent is the collective experience or the aggregate experience within the intersection.

There is a type of relating or some element of association that exists between the car and its occupants, and the other cars and their occupants; there is a temporary accord or an agreement, a tacit one, in which each of the members in these groupings agree to participate in the experience of the intersection although the quality and significance of the experience for each participant will be distinct.

The act of stopping, going, and waiting seems seamless partly because of the attention and expertise of the drivers and partly because of additional underlying inter-connective contextual threads. These threads are and include the mechanical agility of the cars, the regulatory nature of the traffic lights and signs, the structural parameters of intersections and streets, and the cultural context of traffic rules and regulations. These flowing events are occurring amidst a sometimes distracting atmosphere inside a car; with cell phones, music players, electronic information flashing on instrument panels and spoken conversations; and distractions externally via climate conditions and other visuals. Occupants, within an automobile, could be engaged in conversations with others while also steeped in thoughts within themselves. Despite internal and external distractions there is usually an undisturbed flow and synchronized timing of traffic within an intersection.

Activity at a particular intersection, at a particular time, could seem smooth and functional. This functionality is facilitated by the learned habits of the occupants within the cars. They know when to stop or to go or stay idle; whatever the internal or external environmental conditions and/or distractions. However beyond the habitual knowledge and expertise of the drivers, it is less apparent that there is a secondary and hidden level of communication or exchange. The hidden level is not verbal but a collective awareness based upon some form of exchange of energetic and sensory data between all participants within the intersection.

Conscious and continuous focus, by human individuals, is not always necessary in order to navigate within the interactivity of an intersection. However the symmetry, the synchronized, or artful movements, have to be accomplished with some degree or some amount of conscious and direct focus; moreover, it could posited, that there seems to exists some additional level of organization that is beyond our ordinary awareness. Because the activity in the intersection, usually, progresses smoothly even with occasional lapses in direct focus by the human participants; it is reasonable to assume that there is some form of other communications within the context of a provisional or temporary group consciousness that helps to facilitate the activity within the intersection.

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A strikingly complex concert of communication or relating surrounds us, moment to moment and place to place. If it could be seen, it could be somewhat imaged as energetic lines of connection that are not obstructed by setting, by environment, or by physical space. The connections would transmit a variety of information including, but not exclusive to; non-verbal thoughts, emotions, intents, and of course, energetic force. The connections would extend between human and non-human, animate and inanimate, tangible and intangible, and etc., because all of these participants or entities have some form of sentience, or a type of existence, or some category of consciousness.

An entity or a being or an object can be defined minimally by the possession of an attribute, in some form, of sentience or consciousness. Sentience implies an active attribute of awareness, perception or attentiveness on the part of the being or the entity or object. This definition broadly includes human and non-human beings, animate and inanimate entities or objects, and other tangible existential elements and other intangible existential elements. Consciousness or sentience, in a being or an entity or others, also implies purposeful or value-full choice making or choice selection and an instinct or a drive toward some form of development or evolution. Most importantly it should be acknowledged that the quality, category, and/or degree of these aforementioned attributes, of sentienceness, do widely vary.

There are at least two conditions that can be attributed to reality and/or to various elements of reality, whether physical or non-physical. These are a condition of being and a condition of doing; that is, a condition of existence or sentience and a condition of actualizing or experiencing. As regards to the usage of the terms; beings, entities, objects and so on; these are categories of existence and the main distinction, between these categories, may be the degree of complexity of sentience. While these terms are perhaps interchangeable, in general, beings appear to have more complex and diverse capabilities, in contrast to objects which appear to have less complexity and capacities; which places the nature of entities somewhere in between. Beings, entities, objects or other conditions of sentience can be physical attributes and/or non-physical attributes.

The condition of actualizing or the condition of experiencing describes the active/creative principle of sentience. These conditions can also have physical qualities and/or a non-physical qualities. It should additionally be noted that intangibles such as thoughts, ideas, concepts, and others are valid though quite different categories of beingness/doingness.

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An extension to the traffic intersection scenario: two individuals, human individuals, have a need to interact; this is a need that is beyond the ordinary and/or it is outside the habitual life pattern for these two individuals. The necessity for this extra-ordinary element could be incorporated into the experience of the intersection. Elements of contrast or surprise occur within the everyday smooth flowing and repetitive nature of events; it can be drawn into our lives because new input and different input, when interjected into the perpetual flow of daily experience, can influence or impact that perpetual flow and the individuals involved.

An extraordinary element can be manifested as a crash, among other variations or options, within the context of the traffic intersection. There is an alteration or an interruption in the smoothness of the flow of activity, in the aforementioned intersection; although seemingly an unnecessary, excessive, and/or destructive occurrence, there can be other considerations. It could be considered an expression of some amount of need of one or more participants within this arena, this intersection, to engage in a contrasting event or experience.

New input or different input in the form of a thought, an emotion, an intent, an event, or any other strongly implanted inside/outside element, within a particular field of activity can manifest as a contrasting event in an otherwise continual and routine flow of events. Contrast can occur, in a traffic intersection, when an accident happens which stops or changes the usual flow of events. Contrast can occur when a small group friends are forced to change their planned weekly get-together from a Friday night to a Wednesday night. Contrast can occur when a person graduates from college and then must leave that established life pattern in order to begin a new and a different life pattern.

Elements of change do appear within the flow of an individual life and within the collective flow of multiple lives for a variety of purposes; and the impact of contrast or change elements can range from subtle to traumatic. Essentially a standard condition or attribute of physical reality is the constant, routine, and complex flow of experiences. Additionally another standard condition is the incorporation of contrast events within that routine flow. Ideally and minimally, contrast events can potentially offer opportunities for individuals to experience the everyday flow of their immediate reality differently.

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There are strongly established routines within the life of an individual, created over time, that represent distinct intrapersonal, interpersonal, societal, energetic, emotional, practical, and so on, patterns. An individual essentially navigates through the experiences of its lifespan via the mechanisms of their well-established routines and patterns. One of several methods of changing or alternating routines and patterns is through the introduction of contrast events.

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Event

The composition of an event or an experience consists of a series of acts or actions, physical and non-physical that expresses or manifests, at the very least; function, necessity, and/or significance for our existence and the existence of other beings and entities. An event is an outcome. An event is a response. An event can be a physically active expression of a non-physical intent, thought, value, suggestion, and so forth. Mass events are a manifestation, an aggregation, of the world around us; family, the influences of community, town, region, nation and the planet; and a single event is a manifestation of, at least, a singular and particular interior reality.

Our collective outside reality is a series of exterior actions; simultaneous, overlapping, and continuous; and this is an expression of our collective interior reality. Our personal outside reality, somewhat, expresses or relates our interior ideas, values, emotions, needs, plans, goals, aspirations, and so on. Furthermore personal or micro events, and public or mass events, are expressive and communicative. Micro events communicates some aspect or aspects of a personal internal reality. Mass events or aggregate events communicate the complex collective and/or the collective unconsciousness; which is comprised of innumerable personal interior realities.

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An external physical event, or events, is not a self-starting or an independent phenomenon rather it is an expression or a manifestation of some, though not all, internal experience or stimulus. This would suggest that all events; including non-human events such as a dog barking, a pot heating water, a storm releasing rain and wind, paint drying, a tree standing in a forest, a planet orbiting, sub-atomic particles colliding, a book leaning against a shelf, or other non-human experiences; also have an implicit and an explicit composition.

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Although not all interior reality is expressed, or needs to be expressed, in any particular fashion in an exterior reality; it can be supposed that all expressed exterior acts or actions do serve some purpose or have some necessity. A purpose, whether a lucid or an opaque one, in its collective or aggregate expressiveness; and a purpose, whether an apparent or a non-apparent one, for our individual or personal expressiveness in the world.

An architect’s plans for a building or a chef’s recipe for a meal begins as an interior experience or stimulus and, in some cases, becomes concrete exterior reality as expressed as live action in our physical world. A teenager imaging three possible choices for a weekend activity with friends will eventually decide to choose one of the three choices, which will be realized externally. Another example could include a driver who ponders two different routes to the workplace and then decides on the one actual desired route to pursue.

All individual internal decisions, stimuli, choices, and so forth, that subsequently manifest as events in our physical reality are not occurring in a vacuum but they are a part of a cascade of overlapping and continuous events. Additionally there is some form of interplay or interaction between the linked implicit and explicit composition of all events and experiences. An internal option or stimulus that is made manifest in the external world, which interacts with other external events, can stimulate an implicit counteraction of subsequent options and/or new stimuli.

Multiple possibilities can be explored in an individual’s interior reality until a choice is made and the decision is enacted in external reality. The subsequent event interacts and overlaps with other adjacent events, instigated by other individuals, and reactions and counter-reactions ensue between these various interior and exterior experiences, and between various individuals and other participants.

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From one standpoint, event initiation and event creation appear to be unidirectional. Beings, entities, objects, and others, create and/or initiate the necessity for events and experience in non-physical reality which are made manifest in physical reality. However beings, entities, objects, and others that are outside of our physical reality can also be the impetus for the manifestation of events and experiences in our physical reality, as well. This is because of, at minimum, the close and linked nature of physical reality with an adjacent non-physical reality.

Moreover, from the standpoint of new physics, there can be simultaneous events between universes. On a micro level, subatomic particles and waves appear to move seamlessly and concurrently within more than one universe. On a macro level, the massive implosion of a star, or a black hole, in one universe would manifest simultaneously as a massive buildup of matter and energy, a quasar or white hole, in another universe.

It should be noted that ultimately all universal conditions, and a variety of forms/formats of sentience, do exhibit some manner of implicate and explicate modality as part of its energized vitality.

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There are causal or direct connections within events and between events in interior and exterior reality. An individual, who has a thought about calling a friend, and then speaks to the friend on the telephone, and then that action may prompt that friend to visit at a later date. A scientist who successfully completes an important lab experiment, might motivate actions of his other colleagues to develop their own experiments in the same area of study. A student, who is influenced by angry feelings, aggressively pushes another student in a school lunch line, and this other student, at some later date, silently considers a similar aggressive action with someone else.

There are acausal or indirect connections within events and between events in interior and exterior reality. A person, who has a flurry of unexpectedly thoughts about an old friend, soon elects to reestablish contact with that old friend. A person indecisive about a major life decision, subsequently has spontaneous dreams which illustrates the advantages and disadvantages of the decision and thereby helps to solidify a choice. Another person inadvertently misses an important job interview and later luckily encounters a new and more interesting job opportunity.

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The possibility of acausal or indirect or oblique connections exist, at the very least, because our day to day reality, which is governed by our standard rules of physics, is connected to other realities which are not governed by our standard rules of physical reality.

Acausal connections within events can, but not exclusively, manifest as synchronistic events. Synchronistic events: A person, who is short on time, who is looking for a specific item in a grocery store and finds the item right away. An individual’s attention who is strongly drawn to some insignificant detail or details that consequently become important. A person, while driving to the house of a friend, becomes disoriented in an unfamiliar neighborhood; yet the person suddenly happens upon the correct house.

Outside of the formal or informal practice of the psychic arts; divination, meditation, and others, acausality can be a component of a routine or ordinary physical experience. Acausality can manifest as a person receiving information about the occurrence of an event although the person is remote or physically removed from the event; a person hearing, seeing, feeling, sensing, or intuiting a displaced event from the past, present, or future; or a person re-perceiving a local or a distant event in an unique or unusual fashion.

Another acausality that could express itself in our ordinary, everyday, physical lives can be some form of sensory-crossover or synesthesia. This is a condition of experiencing more than one physical sensation from only one sensory input. A person is reading a particularly descriptive passage in a book; although this is a visual activity the person may experience auditory or olfactory sensations while reading. A person listening to an emotionally moving piece of music, although this is an auditory activity the person may experience visual sensations. A person while touching a piece of fabric, additionally experiences visual information while in the process of touch.

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Whether by direct connection or indirect connection, exchanges between two or more individuals can also be accompanied by energetic, emotional, mental, and other enhancements. For instance, there could be two siblings in different parts of this country who both experience an identical mental urge to contact their parents, on the same day; they might both experience enhanced emotional and energetic sensations. Or a person might be randomly thinking about a distant friend and that distant friend spontaneously establishes contact, this perhaps occurring after a long period of non-communication. These two individuals could experience other complementary or enhanced mnemonic, sensory, and emotional features.